“The Holdovers” (2023)
Paul Giamatti and Alexander Payne strike gold again.
“I find the world to be a bitter and complicated place and it seems to feel the same way about me”.
Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) in “The Holdovers”
If you were to take even a cursory glance at my historic articles linked immediately below I hope you’d get the impression that I ADORE the films and cinematic career of director Alexander Payne. Although I have still to see his debut film “Citizen Ruth” from 1996 (It’s on a “Watch List” that grows longer and longer every passing day) “Election” began my odyssey for the American filmmaker in 1999 and which really kicked into gear with the acidic Oscar winning comedy “About Schmidt” three years later. Then he directed his greatest achievement to date in 2004 with the incredible “Sideways” (of which this film shares so many common themes with “The Holdovers” here and none more so than an angrily depressed and lonely man paired with the sunshine to his darkness) before “The Descendants” in 2011 got better and more accomplished the longer the film continued (another common theme) and whilst “Downsizing” in 2017 is good, “Nebraska” four years before it almost matches “Sideways” in my gushing praise, affection and adulation for an almost perfect film. Suffice to say, I love the films of the American born filmmaker.
Then there’s my cinematic love for the twice Oscar nominated, Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning 56 year old from New Haven, Connecticut, Paul Giamatti. Minor roles in major films such as “Donnie Brasco”, “The Truman Show” and “Saving Private Ryan” preceded a tremendous break out performance in 1999’s “Man on the Moon” before a personal favourite performance in the unfairly panned Tim Burton re-imagining of “Planet of the Apes” in 2001. Then Paul broke my heart in Alexander Payne’s “Sideways” in 2004 as a misunderstood misanthrope desperate to lead his life his way whilst struggling to write a book as he battles with depression and trying to find his place in a world that has long since passed him by.
“The world doesn’t give a shit what I have to say. I’m unnecessary”.
Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) in “Sideways”.
I am Paul’s character in “Sideways” and whilst that’s fanciful and silly to say, it’s also true.
And I’m Paul’s character here in “The Holdovers” too.
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Nobody does a gruff, cantankerous, tetchy, irascible misunderstood misanthrope quite like Paul Giamatti! A classics teacher of Ancient Civilizations at an expensive and opulent boarding school for the privileged and “rich and dumb” as the Christmas of 1970 tiptoes into a brand new year, Paul Hunham draws the short straw of looking after and being responsible for five titular “holdovers” and children of varying ages all of whom Paul describes brilliantly as “reprobates” but of whom he has to guide through a two week Christmas and New Year period confined within a restricted section of the school and “pretend to be a human being”. The two youngest holdovers “Alex Ollerman” (Ian Dolley) and “Ye-Joon Park” (Jim Kaplan) are homesick fishes out of water desperate to return to their families whilst “Jason Smith” (Michael Provost) is the school’s star football quarterback awaiting rescue from a rich father while “Teddy Kountze” (Brady Hepner) is variously described as a “sociopath” and again brilliantly “The Crown Prince of Little Assholes”.
Rounding off the gang of five is a stellar breakout performance from Dominic Sessa as serial drop-out “Angus Tully” the oldest of the boys staying behind and main antagonist and somewhat sunshine to the dark sarcastic showers of his teacher. Paul has his heart set upon a quiet Christmas of reading in a building and within a life he’s become rather institutionalised and cosseted away from a world he doesn’t participate in and a world away from the idle dreams of travelling to the classical destinations of his textbooks. Angus meanwhile has been left behind in every sense: By his parents and from life, as well as a dreaded future he cannot face and, desperate for a means of escape from his enforced Christmas “prison”, he’ll do any and everything to secure his release.
Whilst reserving special praise for a brilliant Oscar and BAFTA winning performance from Da’Vine Joy Randolph as the school’s restaurant manager “Mary Lamb” who battles her own horrific demons with a smile and grace that lights up the film, it’s Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa who dominate this bittersweet coming of age tale with performances eerily similar to Paul’s heart breaking portrayal in “Sideways” two decades ago. Different films, performances and circumstances but the ghosts from 2004 are here. Whereas Paul Giamatti had Thomas Hayden Church as his childlike sidekick in “Sideways” and the bright ray of sunshine to his dark cloud of depression, here he has Dominic Sessa trying to round off his awkward corners, get beneath his tough and impenetrable exterior and maybe, just maybe, they’ll escape the prison that holds each of them back.
Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti have created cinematic magic once again. Five Oscar nominations and Seven BAFTA nominations only tell a fraction of a tale for a film that simply isn’t made anymore, except for Alexander Payne, Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino. From its old school, Grindhouse cinema beginning of crackling sounds and the distortions of 70’s cinema, “The Holdovers” follows in the tradition of all of Payne’s previous films as it gets better, funnier and more laugh out loud funny as the film progresses through a unique tale of coming of age and coming to grips with the human foibles we all deal with. I laughed longer and harder at two characters in whom I saw so much of myself, before clapping, cheering and of course crying for a film I couldn’t possibly highly recommend enough to you.
Not only one of my favourite films of 2024 but of recent times.
Thanks for reading. There’s well over 300 individual articles and conservatively double that number in spoiler free film reviews contained within my archives here. Alternatively, here are my three most recently published articles in this genre: